It’s the banshee way.
Their power is in the way that their screaming immobilizes you, but if you're one of the handful of people who can function through it, like myself, the screaming often instead lulls you into a trap.
Unless, of course, you’re familiar with banshees.
Pemba doubles over, hands clapping over his ears as he groans in agony, and Url falls from his seat on the cart as he lets out a shout himself. The moment he does, the elf darts forward and gets one hand on the reins of the horse, and I jump to my feet.
With the scepter held out in front of me, I try one last time to reason with it, the Elvish falling from my tongue as though it were my first language and not my third. “I can help you! You don't have to do this. I can help you get wherever you're going.”
It smiles at me, ghoulish and gross, but its hand reaches behind its back and pulls out a dagger, the blade of which is rusted and dirty. It lifts the dagger to slash the horse’s throat, and as panic flares in my chest, my magic runs through my arm and bursts out of the scepter…and hits the elf.
The warmth of its blood hits my face, and I squeeze my eyes shut in absolute horror so I don’t have to see what I’ve done.
Pemba makes a gasping noise from where he is curled up in a ball at my feet, still incapacitated by the screaming of the banshee, and I force my eyes open again and step down from the cart.
“Rooke,” he gasps, but I ignore his attempt to stop me.
If the banshee doesn't stop screaming, before too long, my brother's brain will liquefy in his skull. I've already killed the elf, what's one more?
I think maybe part of me has died with it.
It doesn’t take long to find the banshee. It looks like a young girl huddled behind one of the bushes with another elf holding her wrist. It might be here willingly, or maybe it’s a prisoner. Either way, it doesn’t stop screaming.
I have no choice, not where Pemba is concerned.
I raise the scepter once more, and this time, my magic flows out of me at a steady pace instead of a violent burst. Maybe I'm getting the hang of it, or maybe the numbness that has taken over my body has controlled the flow for me. The screaming stops the moment the banshee's heart does.
This is probably the first time in the history of the Ravenswyrd Coven that the Mother has taken a life.
Three lives.
I’ve stumble two steps away from the bodies before I vomit. I don't stop until my stomach is cramping and I'm bringing up nothing but bile. Pemba comes over to me, blood flowing out of his nose from the damage the banshee has done, and I focus on that. I couldn't let it kill him.
I'm not in the forest anymore.
I'm not a safe little girl with parents who love her and a centuries-long covenant of neutrality protecting me from the evils of the world.
Kill or be killed.
“It’s okay, Rooke, take a deep breath. You did what you had to do,” Pemba says as he pulls me into his arms. It's only when I feel the racing of his heart underneath my ear that I can actually take a breath.
This has shaken him up as much as it's shaken me.
“Search the bodies. If they have anything of use, there's no sense in leaving it behind,” the goblin calls out to us both as he picks up the headless corpse of the first elf and drags it off the path.
Headless.
The blood on my face is probably more than just blood.
My stomach cramps again, and I have to lean away from my brother to avoid vomiting on his boots. Pemba hesitates before he does as the goblin says. He's not any more comfortable pickpocketing the corpses than he was sitting by and watching me dispose of them, but the goblin’s simple practicality can’t be argued with. I know that my brother is cursing his lack of power right now more than he ever has before.
As we get back onto the cart, I stash the scepter away once more, sending out a silent prayer to the Goddess that I never have to touch the damn thing again.
CHAPTER FIVE
When we reach a small creek running through a fissure in the mountainside, the goblin pulls the cart over and tells us to refill our flasks while he lets the horse rest and have a drink as well.
Pemba’s still clutching at his head, his eyes more sunken into his skull than they were this morning, but when I ask him how he's feeling, he brushes me off.
